The New Robin Hood
by The Imaginiteer
Summary: Today’s world is changing every day. Life is not as it was, but one thing remains: One man will still steal from the rich and give to the poor.
1. King John

**The New Robin Hood**

**Chapter One**

Today's world is changing every day. Life is not as it was, but one thing remains: One man will still steal from the rich and give to the poor.

It was early; the sun hadn't come up yet. From the roof, you could see the Boston skyline. Through the thick fog that had fallen, the Prudential tower poked a hole through the thick, darkened atmosphere. On the ground around it was littered with apartments and small buildings that looked that if they were alive, they would be very sick, but there was a pattern, a trail. The buildings got progressively bigger, and shabbier as you moved out of the Back Bay, all-leading up to the Box, well, that's what we called it. The Box was a huge factory built on a hill. It had one huge door that was the only exit and no windows. What was inside was horrible, too horrible to describe. And on top, the worst part of all. Three towers that were the Box's vents. These towers each had a smoke stack pluming out of it, that was poisoning the city. And that's how my morning started, getting ready to go hunting.


	2. The Merry Men

**Chapter Two**

"Will! Are you ready? Get in! We're leaving!" I yelled. The door closed, and the locking mechanism churned as it sealed. The engine roared, and we started off. "Rob, what's our ETA?" asked Will. Will was my old friend from high school, and had always thought that we could change the world. He was always ready to help me with a new job, and though he lacked the brains to plan the operation, he was tough, and would never let me down. "80 minutes, or so, till we hit the Box," I replied, "Jen, you have the map right?" "Oh darn, I knew I forgot something. Yes _Robby, _I have the map" said Jen. I hate it when she calls me that. That was Will's sister, Jen. She was kind of edgy, but she knew how to drive Big D. "Will, we're going under water, get ready." I yelled. Big D is basically an armored, weaponized brick that had wheels. And it could dig through steel. The military used to use it, but now there's no military so I bought it online. A few minor modifications and it's the perfect tank. We were tunneling directly under the Charles River. Big D was tough enough to drill through solid bedrock, but I wasn't sure what would happen if we didn't dig deep enough under the water, but that's another bridge to cross. Will was standing by the porthole when he called over to me, "Hey Rob, we should really get out of this tunnel" "Will, if we don't stay underground, people will notice the giant tank rolling down the street." I responded, probably in an unnecessarily sarcastic way. "Ok, your call, but can this thing move in water, because it looks like we're going to be swimming the rest of the way. The tunnel is collapsing, and water is leaking in…a lot of water."


	3. Into the Box

**Chapter Three**

He was right, a stream was forming under the belly of Big D and it was rising too quickly. "Jenny, get us out of here now!" I yelled. "I can't, we're too slow! We'll never make it!" she said, panicked. "I always had a feeling you would kill me Rob. Why? Your best friend! What did I do to deserve this?" retorted Will. "Oh shut up Will, we'll be fine. Just stick to the plan, and we'll be home for lunch". We were coming up to the Box fast. Nobody had ever gotten this close and survived. There was a mile wide radius around it with twelve-foot fences, barbed wire, cameras, guns, and the whole shebang. Nobody ever got into the box, and nobody ever came out. There were rumors that the entire work force were slave laborers from the south, or that it was really just robotics, or something like that, but one thing was never disputed. Never go near the box, or it will eat you up. Most people weren't concerned with it much either. They stayed out of its way and it stayed out of theirs. Boston was lucky, we still had each other. The cities were more like shantytowns, and we didn't get hit too badly from the NYC fallout. Most of the actual city was abandoned though, because most of the buildings had no structural integrity left in them. People lived in whatever cardboard or sheet metal scraps they could find, and shared anything they had. It was the only way we can survive. The old people teach the kids, and the moms and dads go out and try to farm. There's no more money, or buying or selling. Just living or dying. And it hasn't always been like this; well it has as long as I've been alive, but my dad was working at the Pru before I was born, before the box, before the war. He's gone now. They took him off to fight, and he never came back. For all I know he might still be out there somewhere, but I'll never know. My mom died when I was five, and I was left to fend for myself. Now I'm 25 and doing pretty well. I've got my own place, it's an old apartment in Cambridge, nobody really bugs me there because there's no food or water, so the privacy is nice. I work mostly out of what used to be MIT, and that's nice. The libraries are fantastic, so I spend most of my time reading when I'm not working on Big D, or organizing…well stuff. I may or may not be running an underground revolution. I guess me telling you about our little adventure into the box kind of gave that one away though. Focus.

We where almost across the Charles when we heard it. An almost faint, yet powerful thump…thump…thump. It was more like you could feel it than actually hear it. It must have been coming from the Box because it was getting louder and stronger as we got closer. A bolt on the floor started bouncing up and down and Big D was shaking like a tin can. This is the part where you start to worry that you're in over your head. You can't see your enemy, but you know he's there, and he wants your scalp. But you also know that you can't turn back because dying would be better than knowing you failed, or that you didn't have the guts. And in today's world, if you don't have the guts, you're going to die anyway. So we kept going, and nobody said anything more after the noise started. We all knew what each was thinking. We all thought of the best battle speech we could come up with and it wasn't good enough to bother saying. The beat was our commander leading us into battle. It wanted us to come closer, to see what it was doing, and to try and stop it. It called to us to beat the odds and fight a monster five hundred times bigger and a thousand times stronger than us. It wanted us to win, and it wanted to see us fail to. It was all the motivation we needed, because an end to that beat would be an end to the tyranny, and the fear, and the terror. We had to stop that beat, that cursed drum, that drum that only sounds in Hell.


	4. The Scourge

"That's it, we're here. Take us up Jen". I couldn't have possibly prepared for what we found above ground. I mean mentally. There was nobody there, no security, no cameras, no nothing. There wasn't even a door on the Box. Just a big garage door that was open. I wasn't sure what to do honestly, maybe it was a trap. We shot out a few flares, and nothing happened, so we decided to get out and walk around. We had to wear the HAZMAT suits; luckily I had made a few…modifications. Bulletproof, UV secure and built in machine guns to name a few. Anyway, we got out and walked around, but there was nobody around. The machine was the only noise around. Finally after about an hour, I got up the nerve to go into the box. I couldn't believe what I saw. The noise was a giant shovel that was scooping coal into the largest furnace I'd ever seen. But that was it; there was nothing else there. Just a big hole in the ceiling and the dirtiest smoke plume on earth.

Now we had a problem, because blowing it up would just keep the polluting fire going, but I didn't have to power to put it out. It was time to go and regroup. I'd never seen a fire like that. I couldn't stop shaking. I had never been so afraid before. Normally I was determined, strong and stoic. But now, I didn't know who I was fighting, and I didn't know how I could possibly win. And now I think you need to know more about my world. Dear God, one day I hope someone can read this and not understand how a world could be so terrible. Dear God, help us.


End file.
